Missing Piece
by Briannon
Summary: Axel makes a discovery while on a mission in a strange world, a discovery that will change the course of his nonexistance. AxelRoxas if you squint.
1. Part One

Author's Note: I suppose this is really a mild AU, but I started writing it before I knew that. This is a birthday gift for Dora. Perhaps I'll have finished it by her next birthday. Standard disclaimers apply.

**Missing Piece**

_Sleeping with the television  
__and all the lights on  
__One of us is leaving soon, but  
__we're both already gone  
__Stuck at the lost and found  
__we watch things disappear  
__Looking for the Missing Piece, but  
__it was never here_

— Lost & Found, Adrienne Pierce

**Part One:**

To be honest, Axel didn't recall what his orders were that day. But the orders were coming from Saïx, so he was just going to use his imagination. Stirring up trouble, unleashing Heartless, and then killing anyone stupid enough to stand against him with his fiery chakrams of death.

If those weren't the orders he was actually given, then it was all Demyx's fault. (The guy liked to pretend that he was harmless and a bit of a idiot, but Axel could tell the truth. If pressed, the self-proclaimed "Melodious Nocturne" was just as dangerous as the rest of them.) Demyx had read the orders off of one of his note cards, said that they picked the wrong guy for the job, and then vanished into a portal.

"Wise move, buddy," Axel muttered, but even he couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic.

So anyway, there he was in the middle of a big town bustling with loads of folks just going about their normal day, worrying about whatever it was that people with hearts worried about. (Axel knew that his Other, Lae, had been concerned about a great number of things that he could no longer really understand, like family and love, and other indoor sports.) Sometimes it made him curious about what he would be like with his own heart, once all of the plans were laid to rest.

But that was really beside the point. The point was that he was in the middle of one tiny, boring little world with no major stains of darkness, and he had orders (perhaps) to wreak some freaking havoc already. Major signs of darkness would attract the kid who carried the Keyblade, and then he would slip out of sight, unnoticed (Nobodies were good at that—no one pays attention to a nobody unless they raise a fuss) and return to the castle in The World That Never Was.

But really, where to start? There was some sort of competition going on down at a place called "the sandlot," and it must have been a big deal to the denizens of the place, because they were raising hell over some kids with blue padded bats beating on each other. Axel stayed in the background for a while, watching the crowd. Sure, there were people who could be tempted into darkness, but that was someone else's shtick.

What else was there to do? Axel was bored as hell, so he unleashed a horde of Heartless into the center of the mess. Oh, then things got a little more interesting. Screaming, confusion, people losing their hearts by the dozen. Lovely, even if it didn't have enough oomph for him, personally.

He watched with one eye scanning for trouble, the other scanning to see if anyone would try to stop the carnage. Usually there was at least one or two stupid idiots who—oh yes, there was one right there.

He stood, almost calm in the mass of screaming and wailing and dying, eyes unwavering. He was dressed in what Axel assumed was the usual fair for the folks in this particular world, a blue stick of something resembling ice cream in his hand. Then there was a flash of light, and Axel would have gotten nervous had he been in possession of a heart.

The blasted boy had a keyblade where the ice cream had been.

Carnage again, but of the other sort. Shadows breaking apart, hearts flying, the usual. The kid kept bashing away, hacking one Heartless away after another with that odd expression on his face.

Axel took stock for a moment, searched through his limited memory of human facial expressions. No, it wasn't boredom. Boredom was easy to identify. Determination? Perhaps, but he wasn't sure he really got that vibe from him. It was more like the kid was empty inside (something Axel identified with on a very basic level) and beating the crap out of the Heartless was the one thing keeping him from breaking apart.

That was the Keyblade Master? Axel tried to remember the description he'd heard. Short kid, big feet, spiky hair, kind of smug expression? Well, except for the smug expression, the kid fit it to a T.

The battle lasted ten, maybe twenty minutes. Then, in the same abrupt fashion the Keyblade had appeared, the ice cream was back in the kid's hand. He nibbled at it absently as Axel approached him.

The kid turned to him with wide, vacant blue eyes. He was, at the oldest, thirteen. He seemed to look Axel's coat over, then stared directly into the shadows Axel knew were covering his face.

"All right, Keyblade boy," Axel said, and tossed the hood back. "And how might you be doing?"

The kid looked down at his ice cream. "Dunno," he replied. Then he looked back up at Axel and handed the stick to him. "Here."

"All right," Axel said again, but with a little more caution. He'd never seen the Keyblade Master before, and he'd always kind of assumed that they would battle it out to the fiery end if they ever met, but this was something else entirely. He examined the ice cream in his hand, then with more caution than he could recall ever displaying, he took a tiny little lick.

_It was disgusting._

He expected the kid to laugh at him and the face he made at the taste, but all he got was more silence. "Geez, kid," he complained, "ice cream's gotta be sweet! What kind of flavor is this?"

"Sea salt," the kid replied.

Axel shook his head and handed the ice cream back. "This is some kind of town," he muttered. "Strange kids, that whole Struggle thing, and now this."

"I like it," the kid replied. "I think." He tilted his head to one side, regarding Axel with that creepy stare. "Who are you?"

"I'm with this group," Axel explained, not even really knowing why. "We're called Organization XII. My name's Axel. Got it memorized?" He let his hands fall to his sides, ready to grab the chakram should the kid pull the Keyblade out again. "I'm a bad person. What about you?"

"Me." Something with the conversation wasn't lining up. The kid should have sounded surprised, Axel knew that. Or angry. Or something. But he just looked down at his hands, wrinkled his brow the tiniest bit and then mumbled, "I'm nobody."

And then it all suddenly made sense. The fighting, the strangeness, the vacant expression when he should have been looking smug. The Keyblade Master had fallen into darkness! How interesting! Axel laughed, and that finally got a reaction out of the kid. He looked up from his hands, expression one of vague confusion.

"That's okay," he assured the kid, throwing an arm around his shoulder and pulling him close. "I'm nobody, too."

To be continued...


	2. Part Two

Author's Note: I don't have much to say. I really should work on this story more, as I'm posting it here. Standard disclaimers apply.

**Part Two:**

The kid took vanishing into a portal of darkness with the same equanimity (now there was a good word—it was totally worth the effort of memorizing the dictionary definition to see Vexen's expression when he used it correctly in casual conversation) that he took everything else. When they appeared in the castle in The World That Never Was (Xigbar had taken to calling it The Castle That Never Was, but Xigbar was also a little on the deranged side, in Axel's opinion), his expression barely changed. He was a Nobody, true, but it was odd to deal with a slate as blank as his. (Had he had a heart, Axel would have said that he felt unnerved by it all.)

They were in the Proof of Existence, the smallish connecting room with the doorways into the Organization's private quarters. A giant doorway lead to the top of the castle and the Superior's personal space. (Axel wasn't sure_ why_ Xemnas needed all of that space, or if he even did, but it was something he wasn't going to bring up. Ever.) Eleven other, much more modest doorways stood in the cramped room.

The kid looked around with detached disinterest. That was an expression Axel was getting very good at identifying. When Larxene burst out of her doorway (Axel always imagined her rooms were full of torture devices, white leather, and bullwhips) his eyes widened only a little bit. She, on the other hand, looked him up and down like she was assessing a slab of meat, crossing her arms across her chest and grinning.

"Oh," she drawled, turning to Axel with one eyebrow raised. "Did you pick up a souvenir for me, too?"

"This is Larxene," Axel explained to the kid, ignoring her, "the Savage Nymph. We all have nicknames like that. Well," he amended, scratching his chin with one finger, "except for the Superior. He's our leader."

"Aren't you going to introduce us?" Larxene's voice was still cheerful, but he knew her well enough to know that she probably had her throwing knives in her hand. (He swore up and down that she had two modes: bitchy and amused, and just bitchy.)

"Is she always armed?" the kid asked.

"I said—"

"Ah!" Axel turned to her, acting as sheepish as he could. He didn't want her damaging the kid (or, for that matter, Axel himself) before he got presented to the rest of the Organization. "Sorry about that. Meet our newest recruit."

She leaned close to the kid, grabbed his chin tight between two fingers, and examined his face. "He looks familiar."

The kid jerked his chin out of her grasp. "Don't touch me." It was the first time Axel had seen him being even remotely disagreeable, though he understood why completely. The tell-tale crackle between her fingers, the light in her eyes, and just knowing that she liked to electrocute people for fun were all very good clues.

She leaned closer, grinning like something wild and feral. "What is it, little boy? You don't like the taste of electricity on your skin?"

The kid glared at her in return.

Axel stepped between them, eyes focused on Larxene. Like it or not, he was higher up in the Organization than she was. The amusement dropped out of her like it was never there. (It really hadn't. Like the rest of them, she only pretended to feel anything. She couldn't feel any more amused than a rock could.)

"Excuse me," she said, her bitchiness strapped firmly into place, even though she was still smiling. "I didn't realize I was playing with someone else's toy."

"You damage him," Axel warned, "and Xemnas will damage you."

The knives were back in her hands. Great, now she was bitchy and armed. "Is that a threat?" she asked, even though she probably knew the answer to that already.

Crap. Axel thought fast, hands itching for his chakram. Was there really a way to diffuse the situation? Without death of some sort getting in the way of more interesting things? If weapons were flashing, then—

The kid pulled out the Keyblade again. Then he pointed it directly at her.

Well, that was _one_ way, Axel mused.

Larxene didn't move, didn't shift an damn muscle, but something had changed in her. She, like Axel, recognized the weapon. (It was a little hard not to, honestly, with all of the running around and flashing of the Keyblade that the kid's Other had done.)

"Interesting," she murmured, almost to herself, and then in a spidery flash of black, she vanished into a portal.

Axel stared at the place where she had been for a few moments before turning his attention back to the kid. If he had any feelings for Larxene buried anywhere inside of his being, they were all of the kind that would someday lead to her very painful demise. "All right," he said, smile in place. "You're a guy after my own heart. Well, if I had one."

The kid's face just melted back into the blankness he's worn before. (That was another expression Axel was getting used to.) He stared down at the Keyblade in his hand, and swung it once experimentally. "This is a key," he murmured. Then he looked back up at Axel like he held all of the answers in the universe. "Why are we here?"

Axel shook his head. "Wow, you're more scrambled than a dizzy Dusk. Here, before you go off to our leader with an embarrassing lack of information, let me fill you in on a few details. That," he pointed to the weapon in the kid's hand, "is called a Keyblade. It locks and unlocks things. Usually it's carried by the Keyblade Master, who was some kid or another who got offed by creatures called the Heartless."

"Heartless," the kid repeated. "Creatures without hearts?" He paused a moment, processed that, and then repeated what Axel had said earlier, "If you had a heart...?"

Axel held up his hands. "Guilty as charged. No heart. But I'm not a Heartless. I'm a Nobody. When someone with a strong heart falls into darkness, a Heartless is born. What's left—" he bowed deeply with a little hand flourish at the end, "—is us."

To be continued...


	3. Part Three

Author's Note: Sorry about the short sections. They didn't seem that short before. Really, though, this is a series of little vignettes. Brevity is to be expected. Standard disclaimers apply.

**Part Three:**

If there was one thing Xemnas truly liked, it was pontificating. (That was another really good word—Axel approved.) If there was another thing that he liked, it was meetings. Xemnas and pontificating and meetings went together like... like three things that went together. It did mean, however, that whenever the entirety of the Organization got together, Axel was bored (or as close as he could get to it) out of his mind.

For example, that particular meeting was slightly more interesting than they'd had in a while, and Xemnas was still droning on about the same stuff that he always droned on about. (It was one of the reasons why he tended to avoid talking to the Superior. At all.)

"...for us, those with no hearts, no soul, no reality, there is still some existence, a phantom breathing that proves we do have some essence..."

_Translation: we're Nobodies._

"...strongest of the shadows, those mirror reflections, yet we do still crave something between us, still have our own minds and thoughts, and together..."

_Translation: we're the Organization._

"...and this, our newest twilight being, our key of destiny, here while the Keyblade Master still contains that which we crave most, and..."

_Translation... Wait, what?_ Axel started paying attention in a hurry. A quick glance around showed that (as usual) he was not the only one with glazed eyes. (Well, Demyx was scribbling something on a notecard. It could be minutes to their meeting, or it could be something completely unrelated to everything that was going on. Or he could be doodling. Or—Axel cut himself off there and got back to the point at hand.) Through the rambling, slow crawl of the Superior's oration (where had he learned his public speaking skills, anyway? A drama camp for the slow and obtuse?), Axel managed to pick out a few interesting points.

The kid carting around the Keyblade was still alive. He also still had his heart attached, which was both interesting and confusing. How had the Keyblade Master managed that? Losing one's heart was something one couldn't undo. It wasn't as if he could walk down the street to some corner market and pick up a spare. And the chances of one's Heartless finding one's exact heart again was, well, kind of unlikely. Like, way unlikely. He also, oddly enough, managed to keep something of himself while he was transformed into a shadow. That had never happened in the history of anything Axel had heard about.

None of that seemed to matter to the kid himself, or perhaps he wasn't able to wade through the purple prose coming out of the Superior's mouth to grasp the meaning of it all. He was staring at his hands with that expression of his, like he was trying to figure out the meaning of everything. (That or he had a song stuck in his head that he was trying to identify. Really, Axel figured, it could go either way.)

The kid's Other being alive in the truest sense of the word was something that no other member of the Organization could boast. In theory, he could meet up with his Other. He could actually find his actual heart.

He could be whole again.

But thoughts like those were a little too serious for Axel to think for an extended period of time. So, he stopped listening to Xemnas again (who was ranting on and on about their plans for capturing Kingdom Hearts, which Axel had heard no less than three hundred and seventeen times and could recite from memory). If he really cared, he could go and get the highlights from Demyx. The important stuff Axel had already gathered.

After the meeting, he met up with the kid again. He'd changed from the clothing he'd been wearing into an Organization coat, which made him look a little bit less like he just wandered into The World That Never Was by accident.

"Number XIII," Axel said as he came up behind the kid. The boy turned, and his face faded from a wary mask into the blankness Axel had gotten used to. He suspected that something had happened in the time between the end of the meeting and now, but Axel shrugged it off. (The kid was bottom-rung, and there were disadvantages to that. Axel himself had had to deal with it at one point. It would make the kid stronger.) "Thirteen's supposed to be an unlucky number, isn't it?"

The kid looked up with something that may have resembled surprise. "Is it?"

Axel scratched his cheek. "I think so."

"Number XIII. The Key of Destiny." It was so difficult for Axel to follow those little facial expressions he made. Was it part of having his Other still alive and in possession of a heart, or was it just the way the kid was? "Roxas."

Ah. Axel hadn't been paying attention to that part. Had the kid picked the name, or had Xemnas done the honors for him? "Yeah," Axel said, "well, with the number and the nickname comes your name. Well," he amended, scratching his cheek again, "it's not your True name. That would be what your Other is called."

Roxas looked up at him again. (The kid was so short he was going to get a neck-ache doing that.) For the first time since they had met, Axel saw a spark of something behind his wide blue eyes. He tried to catalogue it, figure out what it meant, but then the kid started talking again. "There's so much I don't understand. What Xemnas said. Kingdom Hearts, and mirror reflections. Why do we still exist?"

He didn't wait for an answer, but Axel didn't have one. The Keyblade was back in his hand for an instant, and then was gone again. Roxas stared down at his empty palms with that same nearly-surprised expression.

"Keys. Hearts. Others. Nobodies." He mumbled the words softly, almost to himself, and Axel had to lean forward to hear him at all. "We don't exist, but we do." His eyes lifted from his hands, met Axel's again, and Axel felt something weird twist in the pit of his being. "So much I don't understand. Will you help me?"

The words were out of his mouth before he could think about the impact of what it all could mean. They were Nobodies. They didn't need or ask for help. And then, there was that kid, who was closer to being Somebody than Axel had ever seen, but who was more lost in spite of it.

"Of course," he replied.

To be continued...


	4. Part Four

Author's Note: This section took a long time to write, actually, more so than it appears by my updating here. I also had to edit it a lot, because Axel wasn't abusing adverbs enough. Standard disclaimers apply.

**Part Four:**

"I wish to borrow the boy."

That was Vexen, the "Chilly Acedemic", and source of much of Axel's annoyance. (Axel was all about retaliating without letting the genius know he was retaliating, and as a result spent more time with a thesaurus than his Other had even imagined himself doing.) Vexen was always up to something that seemed to be top-secret, Superior's eyes only. He thought that because he was one of the original members of the Organization, it gave him the right to be a haughty boor. (Newsflash! It didn't.)

"The boy has a name," Axel replied. He looked across the chessboard at Roxas, who had the cold expression (that's what Axel called it, and he encouraged the kid to use it as much as possible) on his face. The kid didn't like Vexen, as much as they could dislike anything. Axel had his suspicions about what had happened after the Organization meeting, and those two getting acquainted was at the top of his list. (Right below it was his partner having another run-in with Larxene. Below that was a first meeting with Demyx. The list went on for quite a while, actually.) "I don't know why you're bothering to ask my permission, anyway," he continued. "He's right here."

Vexen sucked in his bottom lip a little, though the rest of his face never changed. Axel thought he looked like he'd bitten into a lemon, but didn't want anyone to know. Suddenly, Axel was intrigued. The guy was up to something, something big and secret. Perhaps Xemnas knew what he was up to, and perhaps Vexen was acting out on his own. (Axel didn't know why anyone would willingly listen to Vexen, anyway, when there were more interesting things to do. Like watch paint dry.)

"What do you think, partner?" Axel turned to look at Roxas, to see what his reaction to the sudden intensity of Vexen's interest would be. "You interested in being part of one of his experiments?" He made air quotes when he said that last word, there, but Vexen refused to rise to the bait. He was very much focused on Roxas. Interesting.

"No." The kid's voice was flat, his eyes were flat, and his expression had barely changed since Vexen entered the recreational room, but having spent more than a little time studying the kid and his general reactions, Axel suspected he knew what was going on in that little blond head. "I refuse."

"Well," Axel said, turning back to Vexen with a dismissing wave of his hand. "There you have it."

Vexen ignored Axel and pressed in closer to Roxas. "You have a keyblade, but you are not the Keyblade Master. You cannot even conceive of the power you have in your hands. Come with me, and I will teach you all I know. Together—"

Vexen could have continued on for hours (and Axel had seen him do it before), but Roxas was beginning to react, slowly, like something coming out of hibernation. His eyes became more narrow, and his teeth were bared. It took Axel a moment, but after running through a mental catalogue of facial expressions, he identified the one the kid wore now.

He was angry.

"I'm not an idiot," Roxas said, his voice hard. "And I'm not your plaything, either. I refused you already. I will keep refusing, so save your breath for someone that cares." He got up from the table and stalked towards the doorway, and Axel followed behind with a smile and a shrug for Vexen (whose lips were thin and white, and whose expression looked absolutely murderous—in other words, like he typically did).

When Axel made his way into the hall, he found Roxas leaning against the wall, almost casually, his arms crossed. His face was blank again, wiped clean of the anger Axel had read in him before, and he stared at the floor without acknowledging that Axel was even there.

"That wasn't out first meeting," he said.

Axel scratched at his cheek with one finger. "I kind of figured that when you blew up at him."

Roxas looked over at him, then, a quick glance out of the corner of his eye. "I didn't blow up at him."

Axel put up his hands in defense. "Hey, now. I call it like I see it. You, partner, blew up at him."

"That meeting we had," Roxas said, like he hadn't heard Axel, "when I first got here. I met him after that. He said the same thing, then. That I didn't know the power I had." The keyblade was in his hand in a flash, and he lifted it up to regard it solemnly. "I used this on him, but I couldn't touch him."

"He's been a warrior longer than you have," Axel put in, rather mildly, but when Roxas turned back to him with another angry expression, he hastily continued, "no offense, partner, but it's true." He glanced back into the recreational room and noted that the old boor was gone. "There is one tiny little thing that's bothering me," he said, leaning his back against the wall opposite the kid, so that he was facing Roxas, and folding his own arms in an imitation of his partner.

"What's that?"

Axel took a deep breath. "There's something going on with him. A secret. I don't know what it is, but he's got me curious."

"In Vexen."

"Stranger things have happened," Axel replied, smiling.

Roxas met his eyes, his brows drawn together just the smallest amount, and asked, "So what are you going to do about it?"

"That part I'm not so certain about. I'm afraid I've made it rather clear what I really think about him, so if I go to him asking questions, he'll know something's up. There's something about all of this that makes me think he wants to keep this all hush-hush, whatever it is. And then, there's his fascination with you in particular."

"Me?"

Axel nodded. "Normally he's about as interested in the rest of us as a flea is interested in Gummi mechanics. That's not at all, in case you were wondering."

"I wasn't," Roxas interjected dryly.

"But that's twice he's approached you, and I'd bet my heart that if I weren't around he wouldn't be quite so coy about his intentions. He's a subtle guy, until he's faced with his insatiable appetite for knowledge." Axel tapped one finger against his lips, searching for an angle of attack.

"You're thinking too hard," Roxas told him.

"And what do you suggest?"

"Hmm." Roxas did his own imitation of Axel, lips slightly pursed, tapping one finger there. (Hah! He _had_ been paying attention.) "I'm thinking we should get some ice cream."

"And here I thought you would have some constructive advice."

"This is constructive," Roxas replied. "We'll get away from The World That Never Was, give you time to think of a plan, and we'll be acting normal so he doesn't realize that we realize that something is going on."

Axel groaned theatrically and threw his hands up into the air. "You mean Twilight Town, don't you? You want sea-salt ice cream again, don't you?"

"It's good," was the kid's only defense.

"It's gross," Axel corrected.

"Then why do you always eat it?"

"Silly. I eat it because you give it to me."

They vanished into a portal.

To be continued...


End file.
